My parking guide's wearing a Rasta hat
'We're parkin', parkin'," sings my girlfriend, to the tune of Jamming by Bob Marley & The Wailers. "And I hope you like parkin', too." This is her little joke, when we arrive home in the BMW X3. It's to do with the parking sensors, and specifically the display on the dashboard screen. When you park, a picture of the car from above appears on the screen, to help. When you inch forward, the car grows a green hat to show you're approaching the car in front. As you get nearer, a yellow section is added on top of the green section, and then finally, when you're almost there, a red section… And there you have it, the new BMW X3, wearing a Rasta hat – the red blood of martyrs, the green land of Ethiopia, the gold of Africa. "Jah Rastafari!" says my girlfriend, firing up the massive cone she's rolled on the way home from Sainsbury's*.
All in all, it's good to have Haile Selassi on hand to help park, because the new X3 is very big for a so-called compact SUV – 79mm longer than the car it replaces, and 28mm wider. Cars tend to do that – get bigger – through the generations. Which would be fine if roads, and parking spaces, did as well, but weirdly they don't.
I'm not a big fan of this type of vehicle, because usually it's blocking the road in front. In London, where I live, they're a menace, especially in more salubrious parts of town during the school run. Not that I live anywhere like that, but sometimes I want to pass through them.
As SUVs go, this isn't a bad one. It's not pretty – quite the opposite, though it's a slight improvement on its predecessor, which was a pig. Oink. They've sorted out the terrible ride issues of the last one, too, and it's a bit posher inside, with leather as standard (ours came in a delightful shade of dog poo brown).
At the moment it comes only with a two-litre diesel engine which means it's unthrilling to drive and not the world's greatest overtaker, but it returns some impressive fuel consumption and CO2 emissions figures. Still wouldn't want one, though...
Then the weekend arrives. And suddenly it makes some sense – the extra millimetres, too. We go to the beach and it effortlessly swallows all my watersports equipment. There'd be loads of room in the back for our friends if we had any. And there's lots of handy cubbyholes for my girlfriend's drug paraphernalia*. It's miserable when we get there, pouring with rain, and the car park is almost empty. But still we go and park right against someone else, so she can do her thing. "Exodus, movement of Jah people…"
* Not really
BMW X3 2.0d
Price £30,490
Top speed 131mph
Acceleration 0-62mph in 8.5 seconds
Average consumption 50.4mpg
CO2 emissions 149g/km
Green rating 6/10
In a word Irie
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/29/bmw-x3-2-0-d-car-review
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